


Nowhere // Everywhere

by reckingstacks



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon (kind of. pre-sazed at least), Trans Character, a marginally more positive twist on taako's history?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 12:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8445706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckingstacks/pseuds/reckingstacks
Summary: One of the earliest memories Taako has is of being barely knee-high and sitting on a kitchen countertop, watching his aunt stir a pot of soup. She talks him through the ingredients as she adds them, one by one. If he concentrates really hard, he can remember the smell of spice and feel the heat of steam on his face again, but he's never been able to successfully replicate the recipe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A kind of less angsty spin on Taako's pre-canon backstory................. not that I don't have plenty of that in the pipeline too lmao. I may come back and expand on some more of the situations mentioned here in more detail in the future. First time writing fic for any sizeable fandom so pls be kind I am v nervous about putting my #content out there. I am reckingstacks on tonglr too so feel free to swing by and say hi
> 
> (side note: use of she/her for the first half of the fic was a conscious decision, I felt it worked better given it's written present-tense, I wouuuuld rather not get any comments about this. thanks)

One of the earliest memories Taako has is of being barely knee-high and sitting on a kitchen countertop, watching his aunt stir a pot of soup. She talks him through the ingredients as she adds them, one by one. If he concentrates really hard, he can remember the smell of spice and feel the heat of steam on his face again, but he's never been able to successfully replicate the recipe.

She's twelve years old when her dear, sweet aunt passes away. With no family left, she's passed around between friends and neighbours; all of them well-intentioned and caring, but none of them equipped to deal with the unexpected addition of a new family member. She never goes without a hot meal or a roof over her head, but she feels like an unwanted gift that everybody is too polite to turn down. Everywhere is her home, and yet, at the same time, nowhere is.

Two months later, a couple of bandits pass through the town. They notice the scruffy girl with a mess of curly hair and a vacant expression on her face, who seems to slink away to a different house every night. Upon finding out she has no family, they offer her a place among their ranks. It'll give her a permanent home, they say, and a sense of belonging, so long as she pulls her weight. She says yes. There's nothing left for her here.

Life with them is tough, and she feels guilty about the stunts they pull; she crawls into spaces too small for the adults, feigns injury and wails to distract people while her cohorts rob them blind, scouts out the places none of the others can go without somebody trying to cash in the bounty on their head. She's just a tool to them, and she knows it, and when they get busted on a burglary job one night, the whole lot scarper and abandon her to face the consequences alone.

(Fortunately, the Sheriff takes pity on her and lets her go. He says he can't bring himself to incarcerate a pre-teen girl as torn up about it as Taako is. Taako is silently appreciative of all the opportunities she's had to practice being pitiful.)

It's a caravan of merchants who pick her up next. They find her cold and hungry and tired on the side of a road, and promptly fetch her a change of clothes and a hot meal. In the dark of the night, lit only by the flames of their campfire, one of them assumes she's a boy. They correct themselves and give her an apologetic pat on the back the next morning, but the seed has already taken root in the back of her mind.

She brings it up one day and is shot down immediately. "You can't just decide that. You can't just change at the drop of a hat. Besides, you're too pretty to be a boy. It'd be such a waste."

When they stop in the next town for market day, while the adults are setting up their stalls and already starting to peddle their wares, Taako sneaks into one of the caravans and steals a knife. He cuts all of his hair off, and it's messy and uneven, but it's enough. He takes the few belongings he has and disappears into the crowd.

There's no shortage of people in the market looking for help. He doesn't have many skills, he says, but he can cook. It's enough to land him a place within another band of travelling merchants. He falters when they ask for his name, but his heart flutters when one of them calls him "lad". As much as he hates his short hair - nothing to brush, nothing to twirl around his fingers, nothing to hide his face behind when he feels vulnerable - it's a necessary sacrifice that does him plenty of favours and nobody misgenders him. With them, he rekindles his forgotten passion for food, and it gives him a sense of purpose, but good things never last forever. The caravan splits, come winter. Even these people have homes to return to. He drifts around an unfamiliar town until another group passes through and picks him up.

More caravans and jobs come and go. He hops between towns, taking jobs where he can find them during off-seasons; as a waiter, a dishwasher, an apprentice cook. He uses a new name every time, desperately trying to find the one that fits. The beauty of the constant change is that nobody ever has to know who he was, or where he came from, or what people used to know him as. He learns to be assertive and charismatic and spins a new story every time somebody asks about his past. It almost becomes fun; he's free to reinvent himself to every new acquaintance, and it's so, so liberating. He becomes a better actor. He becomes a better cook. Anyone else might have grown weary of the lack of stability, but Taako revels in it. He forgets about how he used to pine for a single, stationary home.

He's seventeen when the first circus troupe takes him on. Here, among the weird, the eccentric, the flamboyant, he finally finds himself. He settles on his name, and he has access to all of the flashy clothes that he deprived himself of when he was still so insecure and uncertain, and the performers teach him to do his makeup and paint his nails far better than he ever could as a child. He's finally no longer afraid to grow his hair out, or wear skirts, or walk around without his binder on when he just can't be bothered because nobody here would ever dream of misgendering him. Troupes disband and form and disband and form again - he meets acrobats, actors, magicians, musicians, animal tamers, and everything outside and inbetween - every one is different, some bad, some good, but all of them bring something new to his life. He hones his culinary skills, learns to be loud and theatric, and some of the magicians even teach him a few simple spells. At the end of every long day, the performers gather round to watch him put on a little show of his own; he flits around his makeshift cooking station with practised flair and flourish, and everyone oohs and aahs and claps for him. As he conjures a slug of wine out of thin air and flames rear up in the pan in front of him, he glances out at the beaming faces surrounding him, and he smiles.

On the road, he found himself. Among strangers, he found family; they may never stay for long, but at least he can feel like belongs, even for just a moment.

Home may be nowhere, but to him, it is everywhere.


End file.
